The 1997 Darwin Award competition has announced its runners up and winners. ----------------------------------------------------------------- These awards are given each year to bestow upon (the remains of) those who, through single-minded self sacrifice, have done the most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool. Note, there was great improvement in the areas of teamwork and cooperation among the candidates in 1997-- it's no longer an individual sport. Here are (drum roll) the 1997 runners-up and winners: ----------------------------------------------------------------- 5th runner-up: A San Anselmo, California, man died when he hit a lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad. 22-year old David Hubal was pronounced dead at Centinela Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred about 3 a.m., The Mono County Sheriff's Department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from lift towers, said Lt. Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit towers. The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower. It has since been investigated and determined the tower he hit was the one with its pad removed. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 4th Runner-up: Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market the clerk threatened to call the police. Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it into his mouth, and walked out without paying. Police found him unconscious in front of the store-- paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat where it had choked him to death. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3rd Runner-up: Poacher Marino Malerba of Spain, shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock and was killed instantly when it fell on him. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 2nd Runner-up: A man at a West Virginia party (probably related to the man in Arkansas who used a 22 bullet to replace the fuse in his pick-up truck) popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth, and tongue. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during the party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D. Payne. Another man had it in an aquarium hooked to a battery and was trying to explode it, said Payne. It wouldn't go off and this guy said I'll show you how to set it off. He put it into his mouth and bit down. It blew all his teeth out and his lips and tongue off, Payne said. Stromyer was listed in guarded condition Wednesday with extensive facial injuries, according to a spokesperson at Charleston Area Medical Division. I just can't imagine anyone doing something like that, Payne said. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1st Runner-up: Doctors at Portland University Hospital said an Oregon man shot through the skull by a hunting arrow is lucky to be alive and will be released soon from the hospital. Tony Roberts, 25, lost his right eye last weekend during an initiation into a man's rafting club, Mountain Men Anonymous (probably known now as Stupid Mountain Men Anonymous) in Grants Pass, Oregon. A friend tried to shoot a beer can off his head, but the arrow entered Robert's right eye. Doctors said had the arrow gone 1 millimeter to the left, a major blood vessel would have been cut and Roberts would have died instantly. Neurosurgeon Doctor Johnny Delashaw at the University Hospital in Portland said the arrow went through 8 to 10 inches of brain with the tip protruding at the rear of his skull, yet somehow managed to miss all major blood vessels. Delashaw also said had Roberts tried to pull the arrow out on his own he surely would have killed himself. Roberts admitted afterwards he and his friends had been drinking that afternoon. (Duh). Said Roberts, I feel so dumb about this. No charges have been filed, but the Josephine County district attorney's office said the initiation stunt is under investigation. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Last year's winner, you will remember, was the fellow who was killed when he attached a JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) unit to his Chevy Impala and shot himself and his car into a desert cliff at 300 M.P.H. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ..now this year's winners: ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- (The late) John Pernicky and his friend, (the late) Sal Hawkins, of the great state of Washington, decided to attend a local Metallica concert at the George Washington amphitheater. Having no tickets (but having had 18 beers between them), they thought it would be easy to hop over the nine-foot fence and sneak into the show. They pulled their pick-up truck over to the fence and the plan was for (the late) Mr. Pernicky (who was 100 pounds heavier than Mr. Hawkins) to hop the fence and then assist his friend over. Unfortunately for (the late) Mr. Pernicky, there was a 30-foot drop on the other side of the fence. Having heaved himself over, he found himself crashing through a tree. His fall was abruptly halted (and broken, along with his arm, as it were) by a large branch that snagged him by his shorts. Dangling from the tree with a broken arm, he looked down and saw some bushes below him. (Possibly) figuring the bushes would break his fall, he removed his pocket knife and proceeded to cut away his shorts to free himself from the tree. Finally free, Mr. Pernicky crashed into Holly bushes. The sharp leaves scratched his ENTIRE body and now without the protection of his shorts, a Holly branch penetrated his rectal cavity. To make matters worse (?), on landing, his pocket knife penetrated his thigh 3-inches. (The late) Mr. Hawkins, on seeing his friend in considerable pain and agony, decided to throw him a rope and pull him to safety (now he thinks of the S word) by tying the rope to the pick-up truck and slowly driving away. However, in his drunken haste/state, he put the truck into reverse and crashed through the fence, falling 30 feet in the truck and landing on his friend and killing him. Police arrived to find the crashed pick-up with its driver thrown 100-feet from the truck and dead at the scene from massive internal injuries. Upon moving the truck, they found John under it, half-naked with scratches on his body, a holly stick in his rectum, a knife in his thigh, and his shorts dangling from a tree branch 25-feet in the air. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Remember THE safety question: WHAT'S THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN IF I DO THIS? Have a safe day ( year) ----------------------------------------------------------------- MORE DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES On February 3, 1990, a Renton (Seattle area) man tried to commit a robbery. This was probably his first attempt, as suggested by his lack of a record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choice: 1. The target was H&J Leather & Firearms, a gun shop; 2. The shop was full of customers, in a state where a substantial fraction of the adult population is licensed to carry concealed handguns in public places; 3. To enter the shop, he had to step around a marked King County Police patrol car parked at the front door; 4. An officer in uniform was standing next to the counter, having coffee before reporting to duty. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a holdup and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, removing him from the gene pool. Several other customers also drew their guns, but didn't fire. No one else was hurt. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Derrick L. Richards, 28, was charged in April in Minneapolis with third-degree murder in the death of his beloved cousin, Kenneth E. Richards. According to police, Derrick suggested a game of Russian roulette and put a semiautomatic pistol to Ken's head instead of a revolver. --------------------------------------------------------------------- MOSCOW, RUSSIA -A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow bank they were guarding to stab his bullet-proof vest to see if it protected him against the knife..... It didn't and the 25-year-old guard died of a heart wound. Isn't it good to see the Russians getting into the spirit of the awards. - --------------------------------------------------------------------- Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet missed him and cut through the rope above him. Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and made him vomit the poison. He was dragged out of the water by a fisherman and was taken to hospital, where he died ... of exposure. --------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- 1998 Darwin Awards! --------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- They have finally been released! For those not familiar with the Darwin Award - It's an annual honor given to the person who provided the universal human gene pool the biggest service by getting killed in the most extraordinarily stupid way. As always, competition this year has been keen. Some candidates appear to have trained their whole lives for this event! DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATES THAT MISSED THE CALL: 1. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys. 2. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off a 200-foot-high cliff on his daily run. 3. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beachgoers said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon whent collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on the Outer Banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an our to free him while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital. 4. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor. 5. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flakvest Berrena was wearing. 6. Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger. 7. In February, according to police in Windsor, Ontario, Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles. 8. In September, a 7-year-old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near Ozark, Ark, after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990. DARWIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTIONS: 1. In Guthrie, Okla , in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with a shot from his 22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head, fracturing his skull. 2. In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second floors of his house. 3. Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, NJ, in September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 AM, the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the window was closed. 4. Taking "Amateur Night" Too Far: In Betulia, Colombia, an annual festival in November includes five days of amateur bullfighting. This year, no bull was killed, but dozens of matadors were injured, including one gored in the head and one Bobbittized. Said one participant, "It's just one bull against [a town of] a thousand Morons." AND THE WINNER: PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the round, where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. "With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and during that time he suffocated. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents."